Ukrainian soldiers vow to continue fighting

Vasyl Talaylo, 35, can still remember the heady day last August when his unit was among the first Ukrainian troops to cross the Russian border into the Kursk region, spearheading a daring gamble to divert the enemy from the all-but stalemated fighting on Ukraine’s eastern front. An elite company, mostly engineers tasked with electronic warfare—jamming and spoofing Russia’s radio signals to confuse its drones and artillery operators—Talaylo’s unit is often among the first to enter contested territory and the last to leave, an essential shield for the rest of the army.

Seven months later, the excitement of the Kursk incursion has evaporated. The last Ukrainian troops are retreating from the region as I interview Talaylo in a hospital in Kyiv. “Yes,” the wounded fighter recalls, his face twisted with emotion, “it seemed promising then. But we left a lot of young lives on that narrow strip of land. We didn’t achieve much, and we paid a heavy price.”

Talaylo’s wife holds his hand—the arm that isn’t in a sling—as we talk in a nurses’ staging area outside his dingy hospital room. A crude gauze patch covers his left eye. Under the sling a tangle of metal rods holds what’s left of his left hand together. It’s not clear if he will recover use of either hand or eye. A soft-spoken, gentle man in mismatched black sweats, he’s not complaining, just eager to see the kids—a daughter, 10, and a son, 6—he left at home in a village in western Ukraine, where he worked as a driver before enlisting a year ago. But his weeks in the hospital have given him time to reflect on the war and the U.S.-brokered ceasefire taking shape. Like several soldiers I’ve spoken to in recent weeks, he’s not optimistic.

Many Fighters Expected Trump To Help Ukraine Win The War

Like many Ukrainians, Talaylo had high hopes for U.S. President Donald Trump. Tired of former President Joe Biden’s caution and what Talaylo called his “spoon-feeding”—supplying just enough weapons and ammunition for Ukraine to fight but not defeat Russia—many expected Trump to be more “decisive.” It never occurred to them that his decisions might not go the way they wanted.

For Talaylo, more decisive meant more equipment, some time off, and above all, for his unit, more pickup trucks. “We run through them in just a few weeks,” he explained, “and depend on volunteers to resupply them. We pay for fuel and repairs out of our own pockets. We thought Trump would put an end to that.”

For another fighter I spoke to—a lieutenant colonel in charge of a drone unit on the eastern front—relief meant more weapons and ammunition, particularly artillery shells. A career soldier with a Cossack topknot, he goes by the call sign Khors and, like many Ukrainian servicemen, couldn’t tell me his real name for security reasons. “We’re short of everything,” he explained. “We’re out of almost everything—including men.” And he, too, thought Trump would have answers for his problems. “It sounds crazy now,” Talaylo says, “But we thought it would be like Christmas—everything we wanted and needed. Instead, Trump turned off the lights—no Christmas at all. It’s a bitter disappointment.”

Both the driver and the officer are convinced the enemy is as exhausted as they are, but more extended and taking heavier losses. “Don’t believe their propaganda,” Talaylo says. “We’re fighting with drones. They’re fighting with meat, and they’re running out.” Ukrainian authorities estimate that 897,000 Russians have been killed or wounded since the February 2022 invasion. At the current rate of 1,200 to 1,400 Russian casualties a day, it won’t be long before the toll reaches 1 million, and few Ukrainians believe Putin can afford another mass mobilization—popular opinion would be strongly against.

“Why negotiate now?” asks a third soldier, an intelligence officer code-named Puma, who texts me from the southern front. “If we had enough American support to fight to the end of the year,” Talaylo speculates, “there’s a good chance the enemy would collapse.”

Ukrainians Are Willing To Compromise, But They Have Red Lines

Ukrainian civilians sometimes see things differently than soldiers—and soldiers aren’t included in survey samples. But several polls conducted in recent weeks help clarify national attitudes. The share of Ukrainians willing to negotiate with the enemy and make sacrifices for peace has grown steadily since 2022, with 81% now willing to look for a “compromise solution” and 83% prepared to accept a ceasefire under the right conditions, according to Rating, a leading research group.

The number willing to cede territory, albeit reluctantly, has also grown, to 39%, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology—although 50% still resist the idea. What hasn’t changed according to KIIS: widespread perceptions of the “existential threat“ posed by Russia. A full 80% believe Moscow is prepared to commit “genocide,” destroy the Ukrainian state, or seize all or most Ukrainian territory and “establish a pro-Russian government.” Hence the widespread concern about security guarantees of the kind President Volodymyr Zelensky has been insisting on in conversations with the West.

None of the soldiers I spoke to were hopeful about the likely outcome of the peace process. All three condemned the pressure tactics Trump used in the aftermath of his Oval Office quarrel with Zelensky. “The formula is simple,” Puma explained. “Fewer weapons and less intel mean more losses—torn-off arms, legs, shot lungs, and lost eyes.” All three expressed concern about the direction the talks have taken. “The way things are headed,” Talaylo noted, “it will mean the end of Ukraine. There will be Russian troops on NATO’s border”—the line between Ukraine and Poland—”within the year.”

Still, none of the men expect Ukraine to stop fighting if Trump tries to impose what they see as an unfair peace. “I will fight as long as it takes,” Khors stated grimly. “Most Ukrainians will continue to fight.” Asked how his unit would pull that off and how long it would remain standing, he reminds me of an exchange described by Herodotus in his account of the Battle of Thermopylae. “Their arrows will fly so thick,” an informant warns the Greeks about their Persian enemies, “they will blot out the sun.” “Okay,” Khors replies, quoting a Spartan hero he identifies as Leonidas. “We’ll fight in the shade.”

Just how long the war could continue in these circumstances remains unclear. It would depend on how much weaponry Western Europe could supply and how fast Ukraine could ramp up its own military industrial base. As is, according to one estimate, by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, Europe provides 25% of the military hardware in use on the battlefield, while Ukraine produces 55%, including almost all the drones. But some essentials—most importantly, air defenses and strategic intelligence—come exclusively from the U.S.

What is clear: for all three soldiers and many Ukrainian civilians, the goal has shifted. “We wanted victory,” Talaylo notes ruefully, “victory and justice. What Trump is proposing looks like capitulation, and things are much starker. The goal now is surviving.”